If I had my way, I would encourage Verizon Wireless to invest in both hologram technology and more "Star Wars" film rights. That would allow the carrier to hire an Alec Guinness lookalike who could pop up in 3-D visions in Verizon stores across the country, wave his hand over racks full of Motorola's new smartphone, and in full Obi-Wan Kenobi drag intone the words, "these are the Droids you're looking for." Ohhh-kayyyy, so maybe it's a good thing I'm not in charge of Verizon marketing.

Verizon Wireless is stoking the excitement around its upcoming Motorola Droid smartphone, which it will officially put on sale on Friday. The buzz on the Droid isn't driven entirely by a marketing team, though. The phone's hardware has received many positive reviews, and it will be the first phone to ship with an updated version of the Android operating system. The circumstances of its arrival also make for a compelling back story: Motorola desperately needs a hit, and Verizon needs an answer to AT&T's iPhone.

Following the Karmic Koala's joyful reception last week, sentiments toward the FOSSy marsupial have become distinctly less enthusiastic in recent days -- at least for some. "Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala" was the headline on a piece that ran in The Register on Tuesday, which chronicled multiple cases of frustration among some users upgrading to the new version. Still, the problems one is likely to encounter with Linux tend to pale by comparison with the security problems one is likely to have using Windows. Unless, that is, you're using Wine.

In a move that resembles a major food vendor giving away its prize recipe -- minus the secret sauce -- to all of its customers and competitors, Yahoo on Monday donated the source code for its Traffic Server software to the Apache Software Foundation through the Apache Incubator Project. Yahoo hopes to grow a community of product users who return to use the full recipe rather than trying to make the recipe work on their own. Yahoo intends to build a robust community of developers around the open source Traffic Server, the company said.

Handset maker Sony Ericsson on Tuesday announced the new Xperia X10 smartphone. It will run on the Android 1.6 mobile operating system, also known as "Donut." The Xperia X10 will begin shipping to select markets next year. In announcing the Xperia X10, Sony Ericsson named the handset as the flagship device of a family of phones coming to market during the first half of 2010. The device will have a new UX platform that will let users organize everything on the smartphone with what the company calls the "most open, human and intuitive user experience yet."

Promising faster performance and a bevy of new features, Mozilla on Friday released the first beta version of its Firefox 3.6 browser. Built on the Gecko 1.9.2 Web rendering engine, the new version contains numerous improvements for developers and users, Mozilla said, including support for what it calls "personas," improved responsiveness and faster startup time. The free, open source Web browser is available for download in versions for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in 53 different languages.

Well the Karmic Koala finally climbed down from its eucalyptus tree last week, and the general result was feverish excitement across the Linux blogs. Reviews of the new release seem highly favorable, on the whole, as does the download process via release mirrors and torrents. Though the Koala was released Thursday, the anticipation has been building for weeks, as one might expect. Amid all the Win 7 hoopla, the Koala seems to be doing well. For all the glowing reviews and general excitement, however, not everyone is convinced Linux is ready for the mainstream.

When the Verizon Droid from Motorola arrives next month, it will include a new version of the Android Operating system. Android 2.0, also known as "Eclair," will no doubt show up in lots of other new smartphones over the coming months. Android 2.0 ushers in a host of new features. Perhaps the one that sparks the most interest is its native support for Microsoft Exchange. "Native support for Exchange will appeal to traditional BlackBerry users that want to access their work email," Chris Hazelton, a research director at the 451 Group, told LinuxInsider.

You know it's going to be a good week when it kicks off with news that the Obama administration has officially embraced the open source content management system Drupal. Just a few days later, the Department of Defense issued an almost glowingly positive memo on open source software. "The government is acting intelligently. I feel strange," quipped Zarf on Slashdot. "And thus another chair is thrown in Redmond," wrote hrimhari. Just goes to show, never underestimate the power of freedom!

Following a spate of rumors, leaked specifications, and an ad campaign explicitly challenging the iPhone, Verizon and Motorola on Wednesday officially announced Droid, the first smartphone based on Android 2.0. Featuring high-speed Web browsing, voice-activated search, a customizable large screen, plus access to thousands of applications and hundreds of widgets through the Android Market, the new Droid device will be available online and in Verizon stores for $199.99 with a new two-year contract after a $100 mail-in rebate.

Google on Wednesday announced the beta release of a GPS navigation application for Android 2.0 devices. The application is part of Google Maps for mobile. Android version 2.0 will appear on the upcoming Droid handset from Motorola and Verizon, and other manufacturers also plan to release handsets carrying the updated, Google-backed mobile OS. Although Google makes other mobile applications that work on a variety of mobile platforms, it's unclear when or if its new nav app will make its way to Android rivals like the iPhone or Research In Motion's BlackBerry devices.

Canonical, the commercial developer of the open source operating system Ubuntu, will release on Thursday Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition and Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop Edition. The two latest releases come on the heals of last week's release of Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system. The latest Ubuntu releases could raise the ante in the competitive field of computer operating systems, where Microsoft, Apple and open source offerings like Ubuntu vie for users. Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition introduces Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud as a fully supported technology.

Free and open source software just got a major boost: The Obama administration announced that it has adopted open source content management system Drupal for the Whitehouse.gov Web site. Though it may look much the same to visitors, the newly revamped Web site went live on Saturday with the goal of improving the tools visitors use to engage with White House officials and each other. "This is a big day for Drupal, and for Open Source in government, and something all of us in the community should be very proud of," wrote Drupal creator Dries Buytaert in a blog.

There was a lot of news in the FOSS world last week, and it seems fair to say that the overall atmosphere was positive. First, following the widespread outcry that followed IBM and Canonical's release of a Microsoft-free desktop package in Africa last month, the two companies announced last week that a similar offering is now available for companies in the U.S. as well. Then, from the ding-dong-the-witch-is-dead department, came word that SCO has fired its wildly litigious CEO Darl McBride.

Mozilla on Thursday introduced Raindrop, a project that seeks to consolidate online communications. The Raindrop team consists of the same people who worked on Mozilla's Thunderbird, an open source, cross-platform email client. Raindrop will complement Google Wave, the new data communication and collaboration tool from Google. Raindrop employs a mini Web server to fetch users' conversations from different sources such as email, Twitter, RSS feeds and YouTube and pull out the important parts.

With more than 200 Linux distributions currently listed at Linux Online, it's perhaps an understatement to say that newcomers to the field face a broad array of choices. In addition to considering their own goals for Linux, however, potential users may also need to take other factors into account. Hardware considerations are often foremost among them. "If you plan to run Linux on the sparc64 architecture," for instance, "I think there's only a small handful of distros that even support it, so that narrows it from the beginning," said Michael Stutz, author of the "Linux Cookbook."

Social networking is coming to the science lab. Cornell University and six other institutions will use a $12.2 million federal stimulus grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a Facebook-style professional networking system to link biomedical researchers across the country. Participants say by making it easier for scientists to find each other, researchers will be able to improve their ongoing studies and forge collaborations that could lead to new discoveries. The new network will be called "VIVOweb." "Scientists have problems finding each other," said Michael Conlon, interim director of biomedical informatics for the University of Florida and the principal investigator on the project.

Fall may be the season for leaf-gazing and apple cider, but this year there's no doubt it's also the season for Android. Just short of one year after the announcement of the first Android phone -- HTC's Dream, marketed by T-Mobile as G1 -- WiseAndroid proclaimed on Monday that there are no fewer than 50 (yes, five-zero!) Android phones expected in the near future. The site even published a list that includes each and every one of them, indicating when those not yet released are expected.

Oracle's $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems appears threatened by recent developments, starting with difficulties in gaining regulatory approval in the EU and ending with a startlingly decline at Sun Microsystems -- a company that was on a downward trajectory long before Oracle made its play for it. Sun Microsystems plans to lay off up to 3,000 workers over the next 12 months, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company is made the decision "in light of the delay in closing the acquisition," it said.

IBM and Canonical have launched a Microsoft-free desktop software suite for U.S. companies, claiming the package will offer substantial cost reductions compared to a Windows 7 migration. The IBM Client for Smart Work package was launched late last month in Africa as part of the company's "Microsoft-free" partnership with Canonical, Novell and Red Hat. Though the solution was initially designed for emerging markets, it sparked widespread calls for a similar offering in the United States.